The UTBMS is a budgeting and billing system designed to provide clients and law firms with meaningful cost information on legal services. It currently includes a Litigation Code Set that was released in 1995 and has since been widely adpoted for contested matters, including judicial litigation, binding arbitration and regulatory/administrative proceedings. More-recently, the ABA has also released Counseling, Project, and Bankruptcy Code Sets.

However, the ABA's Steering Committee concluded that "it would not be practicable to develop practice-specific task codes."This has led various consumers of intellectual property services to adopt inconsistent and/or proprietary code sets that have frustrated consumers and service providers alike.

The UTBMS Intellectual Property Workgroup has therefore been charged with building upon those legacy code sets in order to develope a baseline model code set for patent, trademark, and copyright services.We invite you to join this effort by volunteering to serve on one oy our patent, trademark, and copyright subcommittees.